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OK first of all i apologize for not posting this in the water cooler but... I bought a pair of Wharfedale EVO-2 30's a couple or so years ago and recently decided to try bi-amping them, because i like to use my 25wpc tube amp's but they don't provide that much base! Especially with the 87db/sen of the wharfedale's. Well when i hooked the separate amp up to the woofers, there was no sound from the left speaker! I thought "maybe a loose wire, or hooked up wrong?". But after taking the woofer i checked all the connections & tried a spare car speaker i had to see if it was getting a signal, yes it was! Upon closer examination of the speaker 1 of the wires going to the voice coil was completely separated! I took the woofer to the local Audio Expert, which happens to be the name of the shop, to see if it could be repaired. He said it would cost $35, & no guaranty that it could be fixed! Fortunately he was able to find a thread of wire to reconnect it! My point is if your paying top $$$ for a speaker should'nt there be some better quality control? IMO Wharfedale design's a good speaker, but maybe they need to train their employee's on the manufacturing side better!?
Follow Ups:
It is not an uncommon failure mode, it looks like the glue broke free, rather than that it wasn't applied. A single thump can fry even some very solid drivers- I managed to kill an Eminence Magnum 15HO once, which is a very well made, solid driver.
Bass is supposed to sound big. 6.5" is not a woofer size.
These days consumer electronics are feature rich and quality poor. There is a lot of pressure to churn out newer gadgets with more bells and whistles that cost you less, at least at the initial purchase. Why pay anyone to test products or do any quality control when it is far, far cheaper to just give you a new one if you complain when it breaks? If something goes wrong, just throw it away and buy a new one. Hopefully it lasted long enough so that the new models are out and you wanted a new one anyway. If it is still new enough to be under some kind of warranty it is still much cheaper to pull a new one off the boat from China than to pay anyone to diagnose and repair your old one. And if by some miracle they would actually repair your electronics it wouldn't be more than pulling a circuit board out and putting a new one in, if they can actually get one. Finding a repair shop that actually repairs things is rare indeed.
--Matt
"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot."
--Dalai Lama
Some are overpaid and some are not very good, but majority of unionized workers are professionals who know how to do everyday work as well as toughest work right and safe. I am sure that you would rather pay professional union worker to do safety related jobs on the nuclear power plant than some hack that learned the trade by looking YouTube videos.
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"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
Your assertion regarding a worker's skill set is wrong.
Being a member of a union is not a certification of training, nor of education or experience. Rather, being a member of a union is typically a requirement when one goes to work for a unionized company or government entity.
People join a union because they HAVE TO, not because they're better educated or more professional.
but major ones require quite a bit of training and continuing training to keep up with the latest materials, equipment, procedures, safety...
It seems that your knowledge of unions comes from hearsay, not from the facts.
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"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
Many trade unions - e.g., the IBEW, the electricians' union - provide the training and certification for all members. Those members' names are then "kept in the book" for jobs that come up locally and as well as out of the district. In other words, you join the union, the union trains AND certifies you to a very high standard, then you get a job on a union site, with fair or even very good pay and conditions that are negotiated on your behalf. That is why many people choose to join a union.Not saying this is true of all unions, and there are cases (teacher's unions, some service unions, etc) where what you say is true, but your statements have a whiff of anti-union bias and are inaccurate in general.
In THIS case, though, I'm pretty sure the worker was rushed and underpaid and overworked and probably waayy behind on a quota. Put all that on top of the fact that he or she couldn't give a damn about the end user, and you get sloppy work.
Edits: 04/07/14
But I'll bet the employees of Thiel, Vandersteen, Wilson, Harbeth, Dynaudio, and other manufacturers who do NOT job their production out to third-world sweatshops are considerably more conscientious and skilled -- not to mention better paid -- than those in aforementioned sweatshops.
Of course this is reflected in the price of the products. Outsourcing production is undoubtedly part of the reason Wharfedale can offer such affordable retail prices.
Chances are that Dynaudio employees are unionized. Out of a workforce of 2.6 million 2 million are members of a union.
These belong either to LO (members are skilled or unskilled manual workers), AC (members hold a masters degree ie doctors, dentists, psychologists etc) or FTF (everybody in between ie actors, police, engineers, research scientists etc).
.. I was (naively) sure they were still UK-made, not just a UK brand, and then I got a pair and the box - the box, mind you, not the speaker itself - was labeled Made in China. True, they were under $200, but I was hoping that they had held out.
I've heard that some brands - notably, Emotiva - produces good quality from Chinese sources, but it's still a dicey proposition until you ("one") has enough experience with a brand to be comfortable. I mainly do my own construction these days, but not TVs, etc., and I consider anything made en Chine to be a commodity rather than a lasting investment (like the brands you list, although any mfgr must face real temptation these days).
Most likely, the quality control was in... China!
when put you something together, don't you check/test it before shipping it to make sure it is working properly? when i got the repaired speaker home i opened up the other speaker to make sure of the wiring, & the woofer that was repaired was definitely NOT put in correctly to begin with! The good woofer was put in with the terminals facing down & the brown wire on +! The defective woofer when i took it out was put in terminals up & black wire on +! So somebody either did'nt care about or know about quality control, or how to do their job correctly!
In all fairness to Asian laborers (and all laborers worldwide), I admit that I've read about serious manufacturing defects occurring in some of the most expensive, high-end products available in the marketplace today and most of these high-end products are not yet being made in Asia. It should be considered almost inexcusable for high-end gear to fail prematurely or to be poorly designed but both of those things do happen on occasion.Rigorous quality control inspections do not always guarantee perfect QC. There is something about the nature of routine, repetitive assembly work. It corrodes mental clarity, exposing the discontinuities in almost anyone's attention span, over time - no matter how motivated and/or well paid they might be. That's why it's a wonder that the budget and mid-priced components (mostly Asian imports) that many of us own and love do not fail or go back for warranty returns more often than they do.
Edits: 04/05/14 04/05/14 04/05/14 04/06/14 04/06/14 04/06/14 04/06/14 04/06/14
..."I've read about serious manufacturing defects occurring in some of the most expensive, high-end products available in the marketplace today"...
Part of this problem is that today it is very easy for anybody to pass themselves off as a 'high end company' because of the internet. They just need a good review from a few places, and charge the crap for the product, and presto, your a 'high end company'. But lack of experience and no real knowledge of real manufacturing procedures can make unreliable products.
No base, I understand.
That should have been obvious when the speakers were new, if they came that way from the factory. Or it may have happened sometime in the period you owned the speakers. If the solder connection between the tinsel lead and the VC was weak to begin with, driving the woofer at heavy excursion at some point may have broken it. It's good that your tech was able to fix it, that's some tricky soldering. The employee who soldered it poorly in the first place is probably some illiterate Chinese peasant earning 25 cents an hour, so these things happen.
Excellent point, I concur Brian.
I had always thought they lacked some bass, but during most music it was'nt that noticeable since they are a 2 1/2 way design. And no they were never over driven, although i like mostly classic rock if i put on anything with heavy sub base i let the subs handle it! But now i definitely detect the other woofer. I'm going to keep using the tube amps for now to see how they sound (that woofer probably is'nt broke in yet), & will eventually try bi-amping with a solid state for the woofers.
> some illiterate Chinese peasant earning 25 cents an hour,
Luckily they do better work than overpaid union people in the USA ... :)
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